My ex never did like coming back here, even before our daughter died, not that she would ever talk about it or explain why. After it happened, she stopped going anywhere except the newsroom. Even shopping was something that she would only do online, so that she rarely left the apartment except for work.
She couldn’t even bear to say our little girl’s name, and was furious if I ever did, covering her ears as though the sound of it offended them. There are things that have happened in my life—mistakes I have made, people I have hurt—that I seem to have almost completely deleted from my mind. It’s as though the memories were too painful to hold on to, and needed to be erased. But, despite my guilt, my daughter isn’t one of them. I sometimes still whisper her name inside my head. Unlike Anna, I don’t want to forget. I don’t deserve to.
Charlotte. Charlotte. Charlotte.
She was so small and so perfect. Then she was gone.
When you find out you’re allergic to something, the logical thing to do is to avoid it. And that’s what Anna did with her grief. She kept busy at work in public, and in private spent all of her time hiding at home, trying to protect herself from the rashes of fear that seeing other people inflicted on her. She’s learned to hide her anxiety from others, but I know worry makes her world go round.
My stomach starts to grumble and I realize I still haven’t eaten anything today. I usually have a few sugary snacks in the car. If my dead mother knew, I’m sure she would haunt me with a ghostly toothbrush. I open the glove compartment, but instead of the chocolate bar or forgotten biscuits I’d been hoping to find, I see some black, lacy underwear. I’m guessing it must have belonged to Rachel—women taking their clothes off in my car is not a regular occurrence—though I’ve no idea how it got in there.
I reach inside the glove compartment again and spot some Tic Tacs. They remind me of Anna—she always had little boxes of mints—and while they won’t do much to satisfy my hunger, they’re better than nothing. I shake the small plastic box, then flip open the lid and tip a few out. But the white shapes are not mints. I stare at the thick fingernail clippings on the palm of my hand and think I’m going to be sick.
A car door slams down the street. I throw the underwear and the Tic Tac box back inside the glove compartment, slamming it closed seconds afterward, like a nervous echo. As though if I can’t see them, they were never really there.
Someone knows I was with Rachel last night, and now they are fucking with me.
I can think of no other explanation, but who?
I stare out of the window and watch Anna’s every move. She took her time getting out of the car, despite her rush to get here. I can’t help thinking it’s because she is afraid of what she might find behind closed doors. I sympathize with that because she is right to be.
I know what is waiting for her inside that house, because I go there all the time.
I even had my own key cut.
Not that either of them knew.
Her
Tuesday 10:10
I should have known it would be like this.
There is a pile of unopened mail behind the door, making it difficult to open. I close it behind me as soon as I’ve managed to squeeze through the gap, but discover it’s just as cold inside the house as it was out on the street. My eyes try to adjust to the gloom—it is difficult to see—but the thing I notice first, and most, is the smell. It’s as though something has died in here.
“Hello?” I call, but there is no answer.
I hear the familiar murmurs of a television at the back of the house, and don’t know whether to feel happy or sad about it. The roman blinds are all down, with just a sliver of winter sun trying to backlight their elderly cotton edges. I remember that they were all homemade, over twenty years ago. I try the light switch but nothing happens, and when I squint up into the darkness, I can see that there is no bulb.
“Hello?” I call again.
When nobody answers a second time, I pull the cord on the blind to raise it just a little, and am engulfed in a cloud of dust, a million tiny particles dancing in the beam of light that floods the room. I turn to see that what was once a homely living room is now empty, except for cardboard boxes. Lots of them. Some are stacked precariously high and leaning to one side, as though they might topple over at any moment. Each has been labeled with what looks like a thick black felt-tip pen, and my eyes are drawn to the box in the farthest corner that says ANNA’S THINGS.
Coming here always feels wrong, but none of this feels right.
It doesn’t make any sense—my mother would rather die in this house than leave it—it’s something we used to frequently argue about before we stopped talking altogether. My hands start to shake, just the way they did when I lived here. Not that any of that was her fault; she didn’t even know. I was a different version of myself then, one that I doubt many people would like or recognize. Home is not always where the heart is. For people like me, home is where the hurt lives that made us into who we are.